UnEARTHing Iowa, College of Growth in Iowa

Jarrod Diehm

I gotta say this is one of the most brilliant experiences I have been honored with. Though it’s tough being loaded with information, you take something brilliant from each person that decides to say something. Before I touch on the simulation I would love to talk about one of our first speakers that I could tell everybody was hyped about Adam Carroll. He gave this great speech about how we need to invest in passive income. H used the example of a gumball machine he bought. He said he bought a few and gathered at least 100 dollars a month. This became passive income. Income that wasn’t too hard to earn. So you can get the things you need while still making more money. This can translate in to bigger and better things, and finally looks great on a resume. This stuck out with me like it stuck out with many others.Making money with out a lot of work. These small things can eventually add up. Finally the most enjoyable in my opinion was the simulation.. I was with Ria and Megan. We decided Megan would Lead us, and Ria would run the computer. I was labeled the Marketing VP, and just went with the flow. We started out with the one product no one had, pasta. This created no competition, and gave us a good flow. We started off slow, but picked up quickly. We flowed greatly as a team due to us getting along, and trusting each other. I think if we could have done better we probably wouldn’t have invested in pizza at all since it gave us very little to show for us, and maybe moved strait to petroleum. The only thing that remains unclear to me is the adjustments of employee service and what not. It seemed to me to be the only thing I couldn’t find a chart on to check up on how it was effecting our set up. All in all though we got 3^rd and had a great time, and I hope to play the game again further in the future.

Chikemma Nwana

Today was an eye opener for me in all aspects. There’s nothing like waking up in the morning to learn about passive income. I found it very fascinating yet important to know that you can sell yourself by just going to websites such as odesk.com. We visited Bank Iowa where we toured around and had a couple of speakers talk to us, after which we went to Pella Corporation. At Pella Corporation, Dr. David Roe pointed out to us that there are four difficulties in leading, which are: Leading you, Leading friends and family, Leading up, and Leading down respectively.

Chad Davis

Today we took a simulation of managing a food business. I feel like it was slightly helpful but there were some downfalls. A lot of the groups did not understand the procedure that was needed to be successful. I know its always more helpful and you retain more information about the project if you can figure it out for yourself, but it was challenging to figure it all out in the short time period that we had. There were a lot of good things about it as well. I feel like it helped me try to adapt to the situation that presented itself and I really enjoyed working with the other two guys on teamwork. We really worked well as a team but could not seem to find the right strategy to be successful. Hopefully when we go over the information tomorrow it will become more clear what we did right and what we did wrong. I enjoyed the speakers at Bank Iowa a lot and I could not think of any speakers that were more beneficial than Adam Carroll, Jim Langin and Jeff Vroman. They gave great advice, my favorite being “Nothing is beneath you and you are never to good to take out the trash.” I felt like Pella Corp. really dragged out their presentations and they were trying to recruit us more than inform us of leadership opportunities, but they also did have some really insightful information. I also enjoyed Dr. Roe's presentation today and it was interesting to me to hear someone from his position to give is opinions on leadership and life. I can't speak for the rest of the group but I feel like none of us would have thought about trying to lead our superiors before today. Overall, today was a great day with a lot of information although sometimes kind of slow.

Alexandria Reiser

Day two of Leadership Iowa was fun and once again, loaded with information! I wish the metaphor of a brain being like a sponge was true in all reality, because I never want to forget the information we’ve been given! The day started off by going to Bank Iowa and meeting with the President, Jim Langin. We then talked to accountant Jeff Vroman and lastly, but not definitely not least Adam Carroll. Adam talked to us about financial responsibility and how to create passive incomeà I learned what a gumball machine can do for me! I think one of the most important points Adam touched on though, was to build a bigger life, not to build a bigger lifestyle. 

Andy Conyers

This afternoon, this pilot group at Leadership Iowa University was able to experience  a real-time business simulation in which teams of 3-4 were able to choose various agricultural products to manufacture/distribute in a competition to see whose stock price was highest after sixteen quarters (four years); simulated in about an hour and a half. 

Daniel Hanawalt

Today we did a simulation at Pella Corp. in the city of the Dutch, Pella, IA. I had little idea of what the simulation was actually going to be like other than what I had read from the email that our simulation guide Dan Topf had sent us. Also, I had never done a simulation before. Thus, I was excited and a bit nervous as the simulation began. Our team started out in first, but gradually slipped down as the simulation progressed. Right away, I learned to be patient as we tried and tried to figure out why we continued to lose ground on the other teams. It was also a good experience to be able to put a couple minds together to problem solve by bouncing ideas off the other team members.

Alex Frescoln

The Industry Masters program was a very interesting experiment. Through the process I learned how to manage a business and gained a better understanding about the core ideals that determine market competition; such as product maturity. It had never occurred to me that there was more to selling a product, eventually that product would become outdated or the patent would run out. Therefore, you always need to be investing in research and development along with innovation. Another fun thing that occurred to me midway through the game was to enter other people’s markets in order to sabotage them. This strategy actually paid off at the end of the game, and led to our victory.

Rhonda Greenway

If you’ve read my bio or my last blog post you’re already aware of my infatuation with product placement.  I’ve easily spend countless minutes of my life adjusting my material possessions to display the logo on said products to the world. Given that addiction, I enjoy relating what I experience back to something that is near and dear to my heart. Today, that something is the Sims 3. I’ll be the first to admit that I enjoy the Sims a tiny bit more than the average person. Alright, that’s not entirely factual; my mom would be the first to admit that embarrassing fact. So, it’s only natural that when I’m listening to a bank president, a CEO, a college president and various other business professionals that I fall back on what I know.

Chelsea Berry

After lunch today, we did a business simulation which was really interesting. It was really neat to watch how our business developed over 16 quarters. We adjusted our price, our amount of marketing, etc. It was difficult to figure out how to stay competitive with other companies, while allowing our business to flourish. I realized that the businesses we touched the least were the ones that grew the most. We didn’t adjust prices or the amount of marketing much on our “dairy” product, and it was the one that allowed us the most success. It was interesting to see first hand how businesses in a competitive field compete.  

Joseph Vesterfelt

I learned a little bit more about the business market that I didn't know before. Being in the food industry for 10 years I understood what it took to maintain a good business. I know that to have good customer support you have to have highly trained people who love their job. However I learned a little bit more about the inner workings of marketing a product.   I found that sometimes it was ok to have a low marketing program if you had the customer support. I also found that to keep the business going, if you were meeting the need of consumers, you could raise prices and the people would "pay for the good stuff".

Jon Raftis

Monday was an interesting day for me because I am a Finance major. It seemed like we spent the entire morning discussing finance or money in some way, shape, or form. Jim Langin at Bank Iowa was nice enough to host our morning session and he was joined by Jeff Vroman and Adam Carroll. All three men appeared interested in speaking with us and cared about our potential future success as individuals here in the state of Iowa.

Jennifer Doak

I learned a lot during this simulation exercise. It wasn’t easy at first. I really didn’t know what I was doing, or what I was getting myself into. I’ve never marketed anything, so when it came to this exercise, I was clueless. I was the Marketing Manager for my team. That job isn’t easy at all. You have to figure out exactly how much or how little to market a product, and/or to raise or drop a price on a certain product as well. For those who do the job on a full time basis, I’m surprised they aren’t baled yet, I would have pulled out my hair by now. The market for anything is tricky form what I have seen. One really has to know exactly what they’re doing otherwise they would go bankrupt or lose customers in a hurry.

Danielle White

The simulation was honestly a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. I really got into it towards the middle and just really wanted to have my business succeed. The simulation taught me how equities, earnings, and market share can dramatically control the market itself as well as how successful your business is. I learned how to read the data and interpret it to a choice that needed to be made to make us more successful. It was also a great team working exercise because you needed to state your opinion fast enough that your teammates could express theirs in time to make an opinion. Stress or an intense environment makes me work harder and more efficient on my tasks that is why I believe our team excelled.

Megan McMahon

Today, we played a business simulation game administered by Dan Topf. The game was centered on the Food Industry and involved six groups of three to four students competing against each other. This created many challenges, working with new people, trying to understand market trends and understanding basic business terms. Though our group only had one business major, we were able to place third by communicating well and really taking into consideration everyone’s input. Some challenges we faced as a group were the initial fears of working with strangers and the possibility of failing. Though we had met and conversed a little the day before, the three of us had never had a chance to really get to know each other and how we all liked things to be done. Luckily, the pace of the game made it really easy to set those fears aside and focus on the task at hand. This idea connected a talk we heard previously in the day from Adam Carroll; he brought to light what most college students inherently know, that when you’re crunched for time the complications of the task melt away and all that’s left are the simple steps that must be completed to accomplish the task. Once these fears were set aside, we could see that by combining our backgrounds and listening to everyone’s input we could be successful.

Skyler Wistrom

After lunch today at the Pella Corporation we had a very special guest speaker, Dr. Roe.  One thing that he said to us that continued to intrigue me throughout the day is that my generation has been called the next hero generation.  I started to think about the word "hero."  Did he mean hero like Captain America and The Hulk or did he mean hero as in Homer Simpson.  I know, I know...Homer Simpson a hero?  Think about it...in the Simpsons Movie average schmuck Homer Simpson gets his act together at the last minute and helps to save the entire city.  The more I thought of this, the more I began to think "maybe the perfect hero happens when Captain America meets Homer Simpson."  Let me explain...Captain America stands for all that is right and just.  Homer is a beer drinking hourly worker who just wants to relax and have some fun.  I think it is a combination of being an every day Joe trying his best to help his family while maintaining the ideas of justice that makes a perfect hero.  We aren't going to be able to fight crime with our red, white, and blue shield but we can take and enjoy our lives and help out those around us.  When we are given that once in a lifetime chance to take a major event into our hands and show the world what we're made of, I truly believe that our generation will raise to the challenge and save the world.

Jon Konz

Today we had the distinct pleasure of participating in a virtual business simulation. It was quite exciting to do, and it definitely broke up the monotony of the class room style lectures. I learned that it definitely takes some foresight and knowledge to make a business successful. I know that my group definitely had trouble figuring out how to keep out warehouse stocked up. We were definitely at a slight disadvantage, however. Our computer would not show us any of the tables on the website.   Fortunately though, all of the other computers were up to par. It was definitely one of the more exciting parts of the day. A little friendly competition is always good for getting the blood pumping.

Ria Thompson

Today we took a trip to Pella, IA where we visited the Pella Corporation. We had different speakers talk about the company and the progress of it. I enjoyed learning about a company that I am familiar with and its products. I like that it was not a formal corporate environment but rather an close knit corporation that has a lot of respect for its workers and customers.

David Miller

Pella. Hmmm…the town of roses, wooden shows, and tasty Dutch letters! After spending a nice morning at Bank Iowa with its President Jim Langin, Jeff Vroman, and my favorite speaker of the day: Adam Carroll. They spent the morning discussing what their professions entail and Adam Carroll spoke about how to make easy passive money using resources others lack access to. I now know how to outsource all of my schoolwork!